blood on cotton sheets question

hmm. Is it that much blood? (I don't know. I've never had stigmata...) One can by a cover for a mattress that would be used for incontinence. Get black sheets?

Alessandra Kelley said:

Frankly, if I got stigmata that bad, I'd wear cotton diapers wrapped around my hands with plastic bread bags rubber-banded over them.

You have to be practical about these things.

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Now there's a very good solution.

Hydrogen peroxide

Almost anything will wash out of polycotton. It's the perfect sheet.

Never wash blood from cloth using hot water or it'll be cooked in and be there forever. Wash in cold water. A stain removal product wouldn't hurt, either. And use bleach it you've got white sheets. That should solve the problem.

Is this set in the modern day? If so, Oxy Clean'll do it.

Two things I want to mention. One is that he's not going to be losing any major volume of blood here. Excessive blood loss from a consistent leak is a major health emergency. Normally blood donations are limited to no more then once every thirty days (more or less, with most places being more). Normal donation is about 0.5 liters (usually expressed as 500 milliliters) or about one pint. Or about 16 ounces.

Assuming a loss of one pint per week (and he'd probably have some major health issues at this rate) and bleeding on four days per week, you're only talking about 4 ounces. It will make a big mess, but either it's going to come out real quick and won't take much time to deal with, or it's going to be more like seepage, and at that point, bandages will hold the fluid in.

Second is blood dries into this funky, somewhat smelling solid that I doubt anyone who wasn't drunk out of their mind would sleep in. I'm thinking he's going to be changing the bedding every time this happens.

But if you want to see what four ounces of blood would look like, take some water and add red food color to it and spill it on a sheet. Water is thinner then blood, but this will give you a good approximation. People tend to over-estimate blood loss based.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

If he's doing that much bleeding, he's going to want to get up in the night and clean himself off, because he won't want to be stuck to the sheets by dried blood. I'm assuming that on his regular stigmata nights, he doesn't wear any clothes to bed, because that would make it worse.

Of course blood isn't like water. It is a very active fluid indeed, containing as it does all sorts of fun things like platelets. What that means in practice (as anyone who has ever cut themselves will know) is that if you cover a bleeding wound with a porous bandage then pretty soon platelets will clot all of the blood into the fabric of the bandage, sealing the wound. Blood will escape until that clotting happens or if there is major disturbance to break the seal but it would have to be a pretty major vein (or even a small artery) severed for a reasonably thick bandage to fail to absorb enough to clot satisfactorily. And of course this guy has the major advantage of knowing exactly where the blood is going to emerge so he could put on sufficient bandages in advance. To give you an idea, I once sat beside someone in A&E who had severed a finger but no blood had actually made it through the tea towel he had wrapped the stump in. Wouldn't have liked to use it to dry dishes though.

It's only if you are short of clotting agent that that would not happen, so pity the haemophiliac who experiences stigmata...

Crucifixion is a one time event with somewhat limited blood loss. But you're saying this guy suffers from this several times a week.

Something that would be more similar to your victim's problem would be a bleeding ulcer or something else in the digestive system. And even there, you'd be looking at a patient where surgical intervention isn't possible. These patients need transfusions as their blood values go down the toilet. For example, they'll suffer from anemia, leading to the symptom of loss of energy.

Up to 15% of our blood being loss is not much of an issue. An adult has somewhere between 4.7 to 5.0 liters or about 10 pints. So losing 1.5 pints isn't much of an issue.

Losing 15 - 30% of our blood (1.5 to 3.0 pints) will cause symptoms to start showing up, such as a rapid heart beat. Anything over 3.0 pints is into the land of serious blood loss, and over 4.0 pints is into the land of the dead.

Chronic blood loss versus acute blood loss doesn't change these equations that much. Other then the longer a body has to compensate for blood loss, the more serious the consequences of the compensation. For example, there's a limit to how long you can compensate for blood loss by using a rapid heart rate.

But you need to research chronic blood loss, not acute.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

It sounds to me like a period. Yep, hydrogen peroxide is like magic

I'd tape maxi pads to my arms, but that's probably not the right image for your plot

Remember that when blood dries into the sheet, it turns brown. It'll fade into a lighter color with multiple washings.

I've heard of soldiers using tampons to staunch blood in wounds.

So I guess I'm needing to do a bit more research on the amount of blood a person who was crucified would loose.....wonder where I'd look for that kind of thing....GOOGLE here I come! Unless you all got some starting points perhaps...

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This got me thinking back to my catholic school religion classes. I could be wrong but I think Jesus was the only one that was actually nailed to the cross. The criminals on either side of him were just tied on to their cross. As other crucifixions before them and they died a slow agonizing death.

[without getting into centuries of tradition] Research in the past several decades has indicated that criminals were nailed to crosses and that Jesus' execution was not much different than anyone else's in that regard.

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Without stepping on any Catholic toes, they have been know to make it up as they go along.
6 years of Catholic school and don't remember ever having a bible in my hand. I told you I could be wrong, it was a few years ago.

If he stained the sheets, he'll want to wash them by hand first, to remove the bloodstain. Women all over the world are familiar with the need to stand at the sink, scrubbing the blood away. Once the blood is removed, there might still be a faint reddish-brown stain, which ought to come out when the sheets are laundered.

I've successfully washed out even dried blood. Cold water works wonders, especially if you hold the fabric directly under the running water. Add a little soap and you're good to go.

For small bloodstains, you can use saliva. At least, that's the rumor in sewing circles. Like, if you're sewing and you prick your finger and get a drop of blood on your fabric, just spit on it and rub the spit in. The enzymes in your saliva will supposedly dissolve the bloodstain. Note: This only works when it's the same person's saliva and blood. Your spit on someone else's bloodstains will not work, because the enzymes won't match.

For regular, predictable occurrences, I would take precautions, much like wearing a maxi pad to bed if I'm expecting my period to start. If I had frequent stigmata, instead of letting myself bleed all over the bed, I would wrap my hands in bandages the night before. As others have said, it would take some pretty heavy bleeding to soak through the bandages and stain the bed. Unless the bandages slipped off, for some reason.

Look what I just found:

http://www.stylelist.com/chris-barn...=maing-grid7|main5|dl32|sec1_lnk3&pLid=176026

Before Oxiclean, we used Lava soap to removed the last stubborn brown shadown of stain after cold water washed the blood out.

Squirt with hydrogen peroxide as a spot treatment. This will treat even dried blood. Launder in cold water. Both my kids are prone to nocturnal bloody noses. If I had to buy new sheets every time I'd be broke.

Bleach will eventually break down cotton fibers. Borax is a more fabric friendly whitener.

Buy dark sheets